Thầy teaches that love is a practice, and that understanding is its foundation. Many of us are hungry for understanding and love, he says, yet they cannot be bought in a supermarket: we produce them through our practice.

Thầy offers the Buddha’s four elements of true love—maitrī, karuṇā, muditā, and upekṣā—and explains that maitrī, loving-kindness, is not the wish to make someone happy but the capacity to do so. A father may love his son very much and still make him suffer if he doesn’t understand him. Understanding begins with seeing the suffering and difficulties in the other person, who is often a victim of their own suffering and needs help rather than punishment. Thầy offers the words we might use to open the door of their heart: “Please help me to understand you.”

To understand another person, we first have to understand ourselves. Thầy turns to the Four Noble Truths, describes how we cover up our suffering by consuming, and teaches that self-love is the foundation for the love of another person. He speaks of retreats for psychotherapists, many of whom could not listen to their own suffering.

Thầy describes compassionate listening as the practice of the Bodhisattva Quan Yin: listening with only one purpose, to help the other person empty their heart, and leaving any corrections for later. He recalls four men in their twenties and thirties at a retreat in Germany who reconciled with their fathers by telephone, and retreats in Plum Village where Israelis and Palestinians, after listening to each other’s suffering, came to walk together and even hold hands in walking meditation.

With joy and nondiscrimination, love grows without frontiers. Thầy shares the image of a handful of salt in a bowl of water and in a river: when our heart is large, the small things no longer make us suffer.

The talk closes with instructions for eating lunch together in mindfulness, recognizing each piece of food as an ambassador of the cosmos.

This talk was given on a Day of Mindfulness during the Southeast Asia Tour, Becoming Truly Alive, in the year 2010. Thầy offered this introduction at Tunku Abdul Rahman College, Setapak, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.